At fast food and other restaurants the customer often receives his or her food on a tray. After eating, the customer is supposed to dispose of the paper and food waste by pushing the tray through a tray opening into a trash receptacle housing, and then dumping the waste off the tray into a can within the housing. The tray is then stacked for reuse, typically along side of or on top of the housing. Sometimes, however, the customer drops the tray into the can along with the waste. Similar tray loss can also occur in industrial and institutional food services where food is carried on trays.
Because it is slow and disagreeable to sort through waste in a can to recover any trays, trays are frequently lost in this manner. The expense of such loss becomes substantial over a period of time.
Typically the waste can is concealed in a housing, usually in the form of a four-sided enclosure, from which the can can be removed for emptying. The housing usually presents a tray opening with a swinging door or panel above the top of the can, through which the tray can be inserted so that the trash can be slid off it. The tray opening is wide enough to present access to virtually the entire width of the can within the housing, and is typically wider than the tray itself so that the tray can be inserted through it for emptying. If the tray is not retained, it can drop out of sight into the can inside the housing, where it will soon be covered and lost.
Thus there has been a need for a device which can be installed or retrofitted onto the can housing, and which will permit waste to be slid from the tray into the can without impeding it, yet which will retain the tray in a position such that it cannot easily be dropped into the can, and which will hold the tray in a position such that it can be recovered from outside the housing, through the tray opening.